Handel Society of Dartmouth College Morten Lauridsen Lux Aeterna

presents Handel Society of Dartmouth College Robert Duff, conductor Morten Lauridsen Lux Aeterna Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Requiem as completed by Robert Levin with special guests Colleen Daly, soprano Emily Marvosh, mezzo-soprano Charles Blandy, tenor Justin Hopkins, bass-baritone Lebanon High School Chorus Jonathan Verge, conductor Stevens High School Chorus Katja Kleyensteuber, conductor Woodstock Union High School Chorus Lisa Robar, conductor and orchestra Funded in part by the Glick Family Student Ensemble Fund, the Gordon Russell 1955 Fund, Friends of the Handel Society, the Choral Arts Foundation of the Upper Valley, and the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation. Tue • November 14, 2017 • 7 pm Spaulding Auditorium • Dartmouth College Program Lux Aeterna Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) 1. Introitus 2. In Te, Domine, Speravi 3. O Nata Lux 4. Veni, Sancte Spiritus 5. Agnus Dei – Lux Aeterna Intermission Requiem in D minor, KV626 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Completed by Robert D. Levin (b. 1947) Introitus 1. Requiem aeternam (choir and soprano solo) 2. Kyrie Sequenz 3. Dies irae 4. Tuba mirum (solo quartet) 5. Rex tremendae 6. Recordare (solo quartet) 7. Confutatis 8. Lacrimosa – Amen Offertorium 9. Domine Jesu (choir and solo quartet) 10. Hostias Sanctus 11. Sanctus 12. Benedictus (choir and solo quartet) Agnus Dei 13. Agnus Dei Communio 14. Lux aeterna – Cum sanctis tuis (soprano solo and choir) — Tonight’s performance is dedicated to Charles Faulkner in celebration of his thirty-three years of singing with the Handel Society. Through a generous grant from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna will include forty-five singers from area high schools. We thank the Byrne Foundation, and each schools’ music teachers, administrators and parents for supporting these young students in their pursuit of music. Program Notes WOLFGANG AMADÈ MOZART memory of his wife Anna, who had died prematurely Requiem in D minor, K.626 in February, and to pass it off as his own composition. (completed by Robert Levin) Mozart seems to have composed the Requiem in Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, three stages interrupted by other responsibilities. who began to call himself Wolfgango Amadeo He started in the mid summer period before going about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born to Prague late in August to attend the premiere of La in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in clemenza di Tito, which he had written at breakneck Vienna on December 5, 1791. It is traditionally said speed. Then, after returning to Vienna in mid that the first performance of the Requiem was given September and completing The Magic Flute on the in the new monastery church at Wiener Neustadt on 25th and the Clarinet Concerto the following day, he December 14, 1793, billed as a composition by Franz, worked on the Requiem until mid October, when his Count Walsegg-Stuppach, who had commissioned wife Constanze took the score away from him it anonymously with the intention of passing it off as because she feared it would damage his now his own, for use on the occasion of a solemn Mass in precarious health. memory of his wife. Yet Mozart’s old friend Baron van Swieten performed a Requiem—presumably Mozart began to be obsessed with the notion that Mozart’s own—at a concert given eleven months he was writing the work in preparation for his own earlier as a benefit to support the composer’s widow death, and he even raved that he had poisoned and two surviving children. Mozart’s instrumentation himself. This is the basis from which the legend that is most unusual, though it fits the expressive needs his “rival” Salieri had in fact poisoned him was made. of a Requiem: he omits all the brighter woodwind Mozart’s fatal illness seems to have been rheumatic instrument—flutes and oboes—and replaces the fever, which he had suffered in childhood and several clarinet with its darker relative, the basset horn. He times in his adult years. Eighteenth-century medicine also omits horns from the brass section. The was not yet aware of the connection between resulting ensemble consists of solo vocal quartet rheumatic fever and severe cardiac problems. (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), mixed chorus, and an orchestra of basset horns, bassoons, high A more lucid spell in November allowed him to work trumpets in pairs, three trombones, strings, and on the Requiem and even to make one final public organ (as continuo instrument). appearance to direct the performance of his Little Masonic Cantata on November 18. Two days later he Sometime early in the summer of 1791, Mozart took to the bed that he never left. Mozart is received a mysterious visitor, a “gray messenger,” supposed to have discussed his plans and sketches who offered him 50 ducats as the first half of a for the Requiem with his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayer, commissioning fee for the composition of a who had recently assisted him in finishing La Requiem. Mozart accepted because he badly clemenza di Tito by composing all the recitatives, needed the money, but the oddity of the incident and presumably also with Joseph Eybler. and his own depression and ill health conspired to make him unduly morbid. At times, he took the On December 3, he felt a little better, but the strange messenger to be an emissary of Death. following day he took a serious turn for the worst. Actually, the messenger was an agent for one Count The still youthful composer died an hour after Walsegg-Stuppach, who demanded secrecy midnight, early on December 5, eight weeks short of because he intended to perform the Requiem in his thirty sixth birthday. Program Notes continued Constanze’s first concern was that the torso of the The remaining movements—Sanctus, Benedictus, Requiem be brought to completion; she needed the Agnus Dei, Communio (Lux aeterna)—seem to be remainder of the commissioning fee and feared Süssmayer’s work, though they are close enough to that, if the work was not completed, she would have Mozart’s style to make credible his assertion that he to return the portion already spent. Mozart had was working with notes from the master. By the time completed only the opening Introit in full score, with the Requiem was finally published as Mozart’s in the complete orchestration, but he had substantially 1800, rumors had long circulated about the completed the Kyrie. He had, with one exception, complicity of other composers in its completion. At completed the long Sequence (the Dies irae, etc.) the request of the publishers, Breitkopf & Härtel, and the Offertory. These drafts consisted of his Süssmayer described his role, explaining that normal full sketch: the completed choral part, the everything from the verse “judicandus homo reus” orchestral bass line, and a few essential indications (the third line of the Lacrimosa) was his own, though for the remainder of the orchestration. The final it had been his idea to repeat Mozart’s Kyrie fugue in section of the Sequence, the Lacrimosa, was still just the closing Communion “to give the work greater a fragment; Mozart had composed the vocal parts uniformity.” Whether or not this decision grew out of for the first eight measures—as far as the powerful conversations with Mozart regarding the overall crescendo on a rising chromatic line in the soprano— design of his score, it was, in any case, a normal and then, as if the effort was too much for him, the procedure in Viennese Mass compositions of broke off the manuscript entirely. the day. Constanze sought another composer who would be We shall probably never know to what degree willing to finish the Requiem and pass the whole off Süssmayer made use of Mozart’s sketches for later as Mozart’s for the purpose of fulfilling the movements. Most sketches that may have existed commission. She first approached Joseph Eybler, seem to have been destroyed by Constanze in order who began work with devotion and insight. He first to maintain the fiction that her husband actually completed the orchestration of the finished completed the Requiem himself. passages of the Dies irae movements, entering the added instrumental parts directly into Mozart’s It is clear that Süssmayer was not Constanze’s first or manuscript. But when it came to composing original even her second choice to finish her husband’s material from the point where Mozart dropped the score, so not much stock should be given to his work, he wrote out two measures of a soprano line in claims that he had special information that was not the Lacrimosa and decided to give up the attempt. available to other musicians in the Mozart circle. Still Constanze evidently asked several other composers it was Süssmayer’s pious labors on behalf of his to undertake the work but was forced to settle, in “unforgettable teacher” that have made it possible the end, on Süssmayer. for us to hear performances of Mozart’s last musical conception. Süssmayer recopied the entire completed part of the manuscript, wrote his own orchestration for the However much we may wish that Mozart had lived to Dies Irae movements, and completed the rest of the complete the entire Requiem, we can be grateful for Requiem, possibly on the basis of sketches left by a performable version made possible through Mozart. Mozart discussed the piece incessantly in Süssmayer’s assiduous devotion. Still, many his last days. And Süssmayer may well have taken musicians over the years have noted infelicities in notes which have not survived. detail and elements that simply do not correspond Program Notes continued to Mozart’s style, and several editors have has taught for over thirty years.

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